Trump welcomes the idea of disheartened Americans building new lives in new places because he is president. It is, I suspect, a point of pride since it suggests his vindictive agenda is working.
“Relief materials and temporary shelter assistance are being deployed without delay,” he wrote in a post on social media.“We lost everything, the families. We don’t have anywhere else to go, the property has gone,” Mohammed Tanko, a local, told Al Jazeera. “We lost at least 15 from this house.”
Another survivor said: “I escaped with only my nightdress. Right now, I can’t even identify where our home used to be.”“The grim task of recovering bodies and what little the residents and victims of this disaster can is what’s been going on since we arrived here in the early afternoon,” said Idris, standing in front of a dilapidated house as children and adults alike dig for belongings and bodies.“When we arrived here, we were told by locals that when the floodwaters started coming in Mokwa, more bodies were flowing in from more villages upstream and so this used to be where homes were. Several homes, over 300 of them, were washed away or completely destroyed by the flood waters,” said Idris, as clothes and residents’ other belongings lied scattered in piles across the ground.
Residents believe that the floods may have been caused by “a bigger problem upstream, maybe a dam burst, but up to now officials are not confirming that”, said Idris. “But the amount of water that came into this community is so much that nobody had any time to prepare to evacuate.”Meteorologists warn that more rain is expected in the coming days, raising fears of further flooding across the region.
Flooding is a regular threat during Nigeria’s six-month rainy season, but experts say the frequency and severity of these disasters are increasing due to
, unregulated construction, and poor drainage infrastructure.“We reported to the police and started looking for him everywhere, panicked that we might never see him again. Later, we had information from some neighbours that he is in Migori at a church. That’s when we went there to ask the church leaders where he was. They told us he was not at the church and had not seen him.
“About a month later, they called us to say that the person we were looking for had died the previous night and that they had buried him that day.”The family then informed the police and human rights activists like Kiarie, and travelled to Opapo to try and locate his body.
Kiarie, who is a rights defender and paralegal at the Nyando Social Justice Centre, accompanied the family to Opapo in March.“We’ve not been given the body,” she told Al Jazeera, explaining that she interviewed residents and church members while in Opapo and heard concerning reports about what was happening at the compound.